2-2 · The Major Scale on One String

The goal of this lesson is to be able to find every note of any major scale on any string, and to always know where you are inside the scale. This is a surprisingly underdeveloped skill for most players, but it is highly worthwhile. Working on it will make your playing more melodic, and if you ever find yourself in an unfamiliar tuning, you’ll always have single-string playing to fall back on, since every individual string is just a chromatic scale laid out in a straight line, no matter the tuning.

To start out, you should develop the ability to move up and down within a major scale on one string using only your index finger. Keep track of which scale degree your index finger is on at all times and use the whole-step/half-step construction of the major scale to move from one scale degree to another. If you know the scale degree under your finger, you know how far to move toward the bridge to reach the next degree up, or toward the nut to reach the next one down, anywhere on the fretboard and in any tuning. You don’t even need to know the name of the note you started on.

Freeze the root as a drone whenever you practice a scale. The drone reminds your ear of the tonal center, it helps you hear the quality of each scale degree relative to that center, and before long it flags your mistakes for you, because any note outside the scale starts to sound “off.”

Exercise 2-1: Start with your index finger on any fret of any string. This note will be the root of your major scale (scale degree 1). If you have a Freeze pedal, use it to freeze the root and create a drone. Then, move up the scale along the string as high as you can go, naming each scale degree and playing each note of the scale as you go. Then, from that highest note, descend the scale, playing each note down to the lowest one you can play on that string (this may or may not be the open string). Finally, from the lowest note, play back up to the root. At all times, you must keep track of the scale degree of the note that is under your index finger.

There are 12 possible keys and six strings, which yield 72 variations of Exercise 1. Each day, try doing this on different strings and in different keys. Once it feels comfortable, try playing in time with a metronome. There’s no need to build up a lot of speed; the click adds one more constraint that forces you to keep your focus, so if you can do this in time, you know you have a solid handle on the skill.

In the video, I demonstrated these two variations:

Exercise 2-2: Using the same one-finger strategy as Exercise 1, move within the scale step-wise, changing direction at random. Feel free to vary your rhythm to make this sound a little more musical, but continue to use only your index finger and always keep track of which scale degree it is on. For an optional added challenge, try skipping over some notes while staying within the scale.

This isn’t music yet, but it’s a good warm-up for your brain, and it pays off later. Jumping two scale degrees at a time is harder than it sounds; the easiest way is to keep visualizing one step at a time and skip playing the middle one.

The key idea in this lesson is simple: always know where you are inside the scale. You won’t always keep scale degree numbers in your head, and certainly not for every note you play. Later in the course I’ll show you a few landmarks for finding your place on the fly. But scale degrees are what let you switch between different mental models as you play, which is why this module is so focused on them.